


the only light is me, you, and the moon

by sosobriquet



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley Has Chronic Pain (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Established Relationship, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Wing Grooming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-03 11:07:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24469966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sosobriquet/pseuds/sosobriquet
Summary: Crowley has nightmares about Falling, and Aziraphale helps distract her from them.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 38
Collections: Adversarial Anniversary Celebration





	the only light is me, you, and the moon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FlygonRider](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlygonRider/gifts).



> Thanks to [Aethelflaed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aethelflaed/works) and [cassieoh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassieoh/pseuds/cassieoh) for help with the fable and translation!
> 
> And thanks to [cassieoh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassieoh/pseuds/cassieoh) and [D20Owlbear](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeforeCrimson/pseuds/D20Owlbear) for beta and a few additions!
> 
> The embroidery Crowley is working on is inspired by [this starweaver Crowley art by Callus Ran.](https://ran196242.tumblr.com/post/189993287557/raphaels-duty-was-to-weave-the-stars-and-watch)

_ She falls, and falls, and falls. Until her blood-stained, white wings turn to ash. Until she lands flat on her back, breaking them beyond healing. Until boiling sulfur covers her body, obscuring her eyes, filling her mouth. _

Crowley wakes, her screams muffled by the pillowy softness of a worn jumper, held fast in the embrace of a warm and familiar body.

“Angel,” she croaks, throat raw and body aching. What she feels is only the echo of that long-ago pain, and yet it is almost beyond this human form’s endurance. Moonlight washes through the open window, soft and cool, highlighting Aziraphale's cotton-fluff hair and hurting Crowley's eyes with its brightness.

“Nightmares again, my love?” Aziraphale asks placidly, as if she had been awake all along, and not snatched from sleep by Crowley’s screams. The guilt of knowing the truth is only slightly assuaged by the gentleness of Aziraphale’s hands on her arms, her shoulders, her back.

Rather than speak, Crowley nods slightly, tucking her face up against Aziraphale’s neck and breathing deep, drawing the sharp-sweet scent over her snake’s tongue. Crowley cannot remember when the smell of old and beloved things had started to mean  _ home _ to her; sometime after Aziraphale had opened the bookshop, surely.

“Will you take this off for me?” Aziraphale gently interrupts Crowley’s thoughts, stroking the soft black silk that sticks to Crowley’s back as she sits curled in Aziraphale’s lap. She leaves a trail of kisses across her cheekbone until her lips brush Crowley’s ear. “Darling?” she prompts, and Crowley gives a full-body twitch, like a marionette brought to life.

Crowley makes a quiet grumbling sort of noise; stalling for more time to be held close like this.

“When you’re ready, of course,” Aziraphale adds, but there is steel lying under all that softness, and Crowley knows it. Moreover, she knows she needs it after a nightmare. Even if it hurts.   
  


“Just a little longer, please,” she asks in a small voice, and Aziraphale nods and runs her fingers through the rat nest of Crowley’s sweaty curls, banishing the knots from her hair and the salt from her scalp with a soothing miracle.

“As long as you like, my love,” Aziraphale tells her, “but remember if you fall asleep, I’ll only have to wake you again.”

It’s true. If Crowley goes to sleep again before they’ve managed to empty her head, the nightmare will only come again, no matter how tightly or gently Aziraphale holds her. 

“I’m ready,” Crowley says after a few long moments of quiet; untucking her face from Aziraphale’s neck and the sweet vanillin smell of her hair, unfolding her long, curled up body carefully. 

She squirms out of Aziraphale’s lap and pulls her shirt up by the lacey hem, writhing to work the high, gathered waistline over her small breasts and wide shoulders. Goosebumps break out across her shoulders at the sound of Aziraphale’s little gasp. Most nights, it makes her heart soar to feel so  _ wanted _ , but tonight it makes her want to cry. 

Crowley takes one deep, shuddering breath before setting her nightie aside and turning her back to Aziraphale. Her angel will never ask more of her than she is willing to give and, as a matter of fact, has not yet asked for near as much as Crowley would be willing to give.

Aziraphale’s fingers ghost across the scars that cover Crowley’s shoulders, across the places where her already broken wings had been torn from her body by her fellow demons even as they’d burned with Hellfire. Crowley’s skin ripples at the touch, and she presses back into Aziraphale’s hands.

“More,” she says, simple and rough. It is always like this; Aziraphale starting with barely-there touches and increasing the firmness and pressure as Crowley asks for it,  _ if _ she asks for it.

Aziraphale’s touches grow more firm, stroking across Crowley’s skin rather than skating over it. Crowley sighs another low  _ more _ and those strokes begin to press into her skin.

“Yesss,” Crowley hisses encouragingly, rolling her shoulders into Aziraphale’s hands. The next part hurts, a little, and so they savour the pleasure of simply touching for a brief moment before Aziraphale pushes her divinity out to her fingertips.

It feels like an electric current, a low hum of power that both soothes and stings, more like the TENS unit Crowley had tried once than not. The long-remembered and dream-awoken ache of her shattered wings all but disappears in the wake of Aziraphale’s divine, electric hands. 

The thought of Aziraphale with actual TENS units for hands lifts the corners of Crowley’s mouth and eases a little of the tension in her jaw, distracting her so that she hardly notices when Aziraphale removes her hands.

A gentle kiss laid in the middle of her spine, however, is too much to miss, and she shivers as Aziraphale nuzzles her way up Crowley’s spine to lay another kiss on the back of her neck. This is not part of their usual routine, and it catches Crowley off guard.

“Is this alright?” Aziraphale asks with unbearable gentleness, pressing a kiss to the scar where a holy lance had pierced her shoulder, pinning her to the floor of Heaven millennia and millennia ago. Light floods the place the wound had once been; not the cold Light of a holy blade wielded by an avenging angel, but the warmth and love of  _ her _ principality. 

Crowley’s answer is a long, drawn-out whine that only barely sounds like a  _ yes _ to her own ears, but Aziraphale understands. She strokes Crowley’s other shoulder reassuringly and bends lower to kiss around the jagged scar across her shoulder blade. The memory of long-ago pain flares, from her skin down to her bones, but the wash of Aziraphale’s Light slowly burns it away, leaving behind only the raw tingle that direct contact with Aziraphale’s Grace always has.

"You're so beautiful," Aziraphale murmurs against her skin, "sometimes I can't believe how lucky I am to call you mine."

Crowley squirms under Aziraphale's praise, and Aziraphale relents, kissing her way across Crowley's back to the matching scar on her other shoulder blade.

More burning, but nothing at all like Crowley's first taste of fire. More like hot wax, really, Crowley thinks with a little thrill. 

Slowly, slowly, Aziraphale's touch and Grace burn away pain older than time itself.

As Aziraphale touches—and kisses—her way across the map of scars that deface Crowley’s back, Crowley’s anticipation and dread grow. Until Aziraphale’s calloused fingers trace the long arc of the last one, making Crowley shiver with pain and relief.

“Come now, my love,” Aziraphale tuts at Crowley’s hesitation, stroking her back and shoulders gently, “bring them out, you know you must.”

Crowley knows, but every time she finds herself reluctant. The remembered pain of her destroyed wings feels so real, so present, that she cannot help but fear that they are broken and mangled again. Aziraphale does not know this, because Crowley will never say; but even as much as her wings hurt when they are not physically present, it is so much worse when they are.

“Angel,” Crowley murmurs instead, intent on stalling further. She curls her back into Aziraphale’s chest, letting her head loll against Aziraphale’s shoulder and exposing her neck to invite more kisses.

“My dear,” Aziraphale chides softly, removing one hand from its place on Crowley’s back to tap her on the nose and further make her point. “I asked for your  _ wings _ , not your neck.” To keep Crowley from drawing things out—because she knows this song and dance just as well as Crowley, even if she may not understand exactly what prompts all the steps—Aziraphale summons a wicker basket of Crowley’s from the sitting room. It’s filled with all her embroidery tools and thread, her project of the moment, and all the little finicky bits and bobs that go with it. 

Crowley sighs and slumps, until she’s more of a pile of limbs supported by Aziraphale than anything  _ tempting _ , but she doesn’t attempt any further protest. Instead, she grits her teeth and unfurls her soot-black wings in the physical realm. 

Aziraphale strokes the full length of each wing, and the sensation makes Crowley tremble with pleasure, not pain. "There, you see? All in one piece, gorgeous and perfectly-kempt as ever."

Crowley doesn’t respond, but takes out her embroidery and picks up where she left off as Aziraphale begins stroking her wings. First, she runs her hands over the full length of each, and Crowley can barely even start her first stitches, she feels wound so tight. 

"Would you like me to tell you a story, my dear?" Aziraphale offers, gently stretching Crowley's tense wing down to lay across her lap. 

"Maybe," Crowley mumbles, hissing sharply as she pricks a fingertip with her needle. 

"Oh, darling, are you alright?" Aziraphale frets, trying to lean around Crowley's hunched shoulder to see the wound. But there is nothing to see—Crowley squeezes it, and hardly a drop wells from the puncture.

"It's nothing, angel," Crowley brushes off the concern. The words taste bitter in her mouth, and as soon as Aziraphale sits back Crowley wants to invite her back closer. 

"If you're sure?" Aziraphale says doubtfully as Crowley returns to her embroidery. No need to worry about getting bloodstains on the golden threads when there's no blood, after all.

"I'm sure," Crowley says, and winces at herself. Why she insists on pushing Aziraphale away in moments like this, when she craves closeness more than ever, she cannot understand. And yet she cannot stop it either. 

For a long moment, Aziraphale strokes her wing in silence, her touch soft and attentive as she graces each feather in turn. Crowley marks all the points of a new constellation in shining silver with quick, deft stitches and french knots before starting to draw the connections between them.

"You said you’d tell me a story?" Crowley asks when the silence really starts to gnaw at her. She sounds petulant to her own ears, like Warlock when he would beg her for another bedtime story, and it makes her mouth twist into an unhappy line.

Aziraphale leans forward to drop a kiss onto Crowley's bare shoulder. "I'd be happy to, my dear. Do you know the one about the fox and the grapes?” 

Crowley stops her stitching for a moment to think, then shrugs her shoulders and starts again. "It sounds familiar, but I don't recognize the name." 

“It’s where the expression “sour grapes” comes from in English, but I prefer the original; where the grapes are said to be unripe, not  _ sour _ .”

"One of Aesop's, sounds like," Crowley muses. "I don't think I know it, but I'd like to hear it." She's still getting used to asking things of Aziraphale and not expecting to be turned down, but she swallows her nerves. "Please? If you don’t mind."

Aziraphale makes a pleased little sound. She clears her throat delicately, and begins, “Fame coacta vulpes–”

Crowley's lips quirk at the corners. "That’s not the original, angel, you know it was Greek," she teases, feeling a little more herself. 

“Yes, well, Latin has always been easier for me, and you know it," Aziraphale replies, in tones that suggest there might be a  _ sulk _ ahead if Crowley continues to bait her. 

"Besides, Phaedrus was a friend of mine. It was  _ you  _ who befriended Aesop. Now mind your stitches," she says primly, "and you may translate for me as well, if you’re so bored you want to argue."

It is not quite an order; Crowley may refuse if she truly wishes. But if she refuses simply to be obstinate, Aziraphale will be disappointed and perhaps even a little angry with her. That’s never been something she could abide, much less when she still feels so off-kilter and lost after her dream. 

“Yes, angel," she says meekly, letting a shiver overtake her as Aziraphale sinks her fingers deep into Crowley's feathers to better massage the wing joint.

"Fame coacta vulpes," Aziraphale speaks, in the same tone she had so often used with Warlock, and later Adam and the Them.

It takes some effort for Crowley to gather her thoughts; there is so much to focus on between Aziraphale's touch, and her stitching, and now the translating. "A fox, driven by hunger," she offers.

"Very good," Aziraphale compliments, rewarding her with another kiss on the shoulder. "Alta in vinea videt”.

This one is not so hard. "Sees high on a vine". Perhaps this won't be so hard, she thinks.

For the next words, Aziraphale leans so close her lips brush Crowley's ear, and her stitching shudders to a halt, lest she prick herself again. Aziraphale's breath is warm on her skin when she whispers, "adpetentem uvam."

Crowley shivers again, trying to glance over her shoulder and catch Aziraphale's eye. But Aziraphale redirects her gaze forward again with a gentle hand, and Crowley settles for a pointed, "grapes she desires."

“Summis saliens viribus,” Aziraphale murmurs, scooting over to better reach Crowley’s other wing. Crowley cannot help the little moan that escapes her when Aziraphale’s fingers sink deep into her feathers again to massage the tendons and ligaments that remained stiff and sore whenever they were physical. 

“Leaping with her greatest strength,” Crowley breathes roughly, shifting her wing so that Aziraphale’s hands are just where she wants them. Where the first and worst of the breaks had been, an immeasurable time ago.

Aziraphale gives a sympathetic little hum when she feels that familiar irregularity of the bone between her fingers. She soothes the old ache with a gentle massage, helped along with a little angelic assistance. That same electric current feeling from before makes her wing tremble and twitch. Aziraphale moves closer, trapping it between the press of their bodies and steadying it with a firm but gentle hand.

Letting her chin rest on Crowley's shoulder, Aziraphale murmurs into the hair that curls behind her ear, "tangere non potest." 

Crowley shudders, and Aziraphale presses closer still, holds her tighter. It’s not enough. She drops her embroidery in her lap and reaches blindly for Aziraphale’s face, where she has her chin propped on Crowley’s shoulder, and cups it in her trembling hands. Crowley swallows twice before she can speak to say “she can not touch them.”

Aziraphale stops her careful touching of Crowley’s wing to wrap both arms around her waist, burying her nose in the soft, damp curls at the nape of Crowley’s neck. “Shhh, it’s alright my love,” she soothes. “You have me. You can touch me any time you like. I’m yours.”

“I know,” Crowley whimpers, curling in on herself and covering Aziraphale’s hands where they cross over her belly with her own. Aziraphale follows her down, stays pressed tight against her back. “I know, angel, I know.” She breathes deep, plucking what little calm she has from the pit of her stomach, and sits back up. “I’m alright, please finish?”

Aziraphale holds Crowley a moment longer, humming thoughtfully. Slowly she disentangles her hands from Crowley's and presses her embroidery back into them. "Are you sure?" she asks, both gentle and firm. Crowley nods, smoothing out her work where it had crumpled when she dropped it carelessly into her lap. 

"Discedens ait:" Aziraphale says, returning her hands to Crowley's wing. She strokes over the old broken place one last time, then moves on to the rest of the wing.

"And departing says:" Crowley says, soft but steady. Her hands are sure and do not shake as she stitches yet another golden line connecting two silver dots.

"Nondum matura est;" says Aziraphale. The work of her hands down the length of Crowley's wing pulls a small, incoherent noise of bliss from her chest.

“They are not ripe;" Crowley sighs, melancholy but untroubled; her attention torn between Aziraphale's hands on her wing, and the embroidery in her hands, and Aziraphale's voice in her ear.

Aziraphale starts smoothing down Crowley’s feathers where she had ruffled them, gently urging them to lie flat again. The stubborn ones she manipulates back into place with gentle fingers. Crowley feels a loose flight feather come away in Aziraphale’s hand — it used to make her flinch, even though it never hurt, but no longer. Aziraphale leans over her shoulder to show her, saying, “nolo illam sumere." 

Crowley continues her stitching, even as Aziraphale strokes her cheekbone with a pitch-black feather. It makes her smile as she speaks, “I do not want to  _ take _ those grapes.” 

Aziraphale is silent for a long moment, and from the corner of her eye, Crowley can see her troubled expression.

“Was there more, angel?” Crowley asks tentatively, deft fingers blending together the gold and silver threads of the last star in the constellation.

“Oh, no,” Aziraphale says distractedly, “I’m sorry, that was the end of it. I can tell another if you’re not –”

Crowley shakes her head. “I’m ready—well, almost.” She holds up her embroidery for Aziraphale to see, “I’m almost done with this one, and I want to finish.”

Aziraphale nods, letting Crowley return to the last of her work. She doesn’t interrupt again until Crowley is tying off her knots. “You know I– I never thought that you would  _ take  _ anything,” she says hesitantly, “nothing I didn’t offer. Not even in the beginning.”

Finished, Crowley puts her embroidery away on the bedside table. There will be time tomorrow to put it neatly away. Then she turns toward Aziraphale and cradles her soft, beloved face tenderly in both hands. “I know,” she whispers, kissing one cheek. “I  _ knew _ ,” then kisses the other.

Aziraphale kisses her once on the lips, soft and sweet. “Are you ready to go back to bed?” she asks, her eyes soft. Crowley nods once and follows Aziraphale down as she slowly lies on her back, propped up by pillows. 

Crowley curls up against Aziraphale’s side, resting her head on her pillow-soft chest draping an arm across an even softer middle. “I never thought you were  _ sour _ , angel,” she says softly to Aziraphale’s navel, exposed where her nightshirt has ridden up. Crowley’s own lies in a heap somewhere off the side of the bed, forgotten.

Aziraphale pulls a soft knit blanket over them both and wraps an arm around Crowley’s narrow shoulders, quiet and waiting for Crowley to finish her thought.

“I knew you just weren’t ready. And I knew I would wait until you were; forever, even,” Crowley says quietly, sliding a leg across Aziraphale’s so she’s lying on top as much as beside her.

“I know, darling,” Aziraphale says, kissing the top of her head, “I am sorry I made you wait so very long.”

“S’alright,” Crowley mumbles, sleep already dragging at her, “was worth it.”

“Yes, I suppose it was,” Aziraphale agrees, and is answered with a soft snore.

  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
